


Age before Beauty

by chailover



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 09:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2145837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chailover/pseuds/chailover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tuesday was the day Bruce returned to the Avengers Tower to find a frat boy sleeping on the couch.</p>
<p>For <a href="http://http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/">avengerkink</a>.<br/>Originally prompted <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/8247.html?thread=18864439#t18864439">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Age before Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow, when I write things that are from Bruce's POV, he ends up taking over the whole fic, which is weird because my general preferred character is Tony, and Bruce isn't in any of my favorite romantic pairings. But, man, Bruce just makes me unwittingly want to write him.
> 
> As such, I didn't really manage to hit much of the bonuses. Ironically, this was written mostly on a day when I had multiple people think I'm much younger than I really am.

**  
  
Tuesday was the day Bruce returned to the Avengers Tower to find a frat boy sleeping on the couch.

Let’s rewind a bit:

Eight days ago, after the team had handled the purple giant octopi that attempted to take over Long Island, Bruce had decided that he needed a few days away from the craziness before the Other Guy forced his hand. Tony had whined and sulked but didn’t stop him, didn’t even really make him promise to come back. Except, he had mentioned that the new lab that was being custom built to Bruce’s specifications was almost ready, and maybe that was a bribe. The rest of the team took his announcement with good grace, and Steve had even solemnly told him to call if he ever needed anything.

In any case, Bruce took himself to Africa and...found to his horror that it wasn’t helping. He had tried to escape before, and most of the time he could find a small measure of peace in the anonymity, in the ability to help others that were just as unfortunate as him, albeit in different ways...but this time it was different. He found his eyes caught by whatever slender, feminine figure passing him, reminding him of Natasha. He found himself thinking of Steve and Clint whenever he ducked his head when the UN Peacekeeping Corp’s jeeps drove by, always a blond soldier or two among them. He smiled fondly when he saw the biggest, strongest man in the village he was at gently stroking a kitten’s head, much as Thor had the one time Tony brought home a stray. And Tony...Bruce fought down a smile whenever he caught sight of a smartphone or tablet, present even amongst the poorest of places.

It only took him two days to realize that being ‘away’, which had always been a source of solace, was actually unsettling the Other Guy even more. He toughed it out for awhile longer, but realized that the Hulk liked his team, and not being able to see them and make sure they were okay...it didn’t do much for Bruce’s frayed control. That pretty much defeated the purpose of leaving in the first place.

So. Back to New York.

…Where they replaced him with a frat boy.

Bruce set his duffle down gently. The figure on the sofa didn’t stir, still draped on the couch in typical college guy attire - an oversized gray hoodie with a school crest that he couldn’t identify at this angle, hood pulled up and one arm over his eyes. He was wearing sweats of an indeterminate color which might have been blue once, and no socks. There were a few empty beer cans on the living room table, the TV on but muted, set on ESPN. There was also a Starkphone, tablet, and a scattering of tools and something with wires attached to it that might’ve been an alien toaster or a remake of the Iron Man’s repulsors, he couldn’t tell.

There was the sound of one of the elevators opening, and out stepped Steve. He looked like he had just finished with the gym and was on his way to the kitchen. Bruce knew he was right about coming back, at that moment. Apparently he had gotten used to the team despite his efforts to the contrary, enough to know their routines and schedules and what they liked to do on Tuesdays if the world wasn’t in need of rescue.

And they had gotten used to him too, as evidenced by the fact that Steve didn’t make a big production out of his return, merely gave him a brilliant smile and a friendly clap on the shoulder when he passed by. “Bruce. Welcome back,” was all he said, albeit in a quiet tone, probably in deference to the sleeping frat boy.

But that was apparently enough. The frat boy made a confused, kind of “Hnngrh?” sound and it pulled Bruce’s attention back. “Bruce? Did I hear someone say Bruce?”

It took a second, and by then the guy had already sat up and grinned at him, a bit bleary but genuinely happy to see him. Like Tony always was. Like Tony currently IS.

“Tony?” Bruce gaped.

Tony yawned, then ran a hand through his hair, pulling back the hood on his sweatshirt. “Not you too.” He rubbed at his jaw - at his clean-shaven jaw, and Bruce was abruptly reminded of one of his undergraduate calculus professors. The man pulled off being scholarly during lecture, the suit and tie and facial hair adding ten years, but when he showed up to the midterms and finals in jeans and a t-shirt, no one could pick him out of a line-up with his students and GSIs. “Geez, it’s just a shave.”

“You’re not wearing a suit.” Bruce said faintly. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen Tony out of suits - but the billionaire’s usual workshop chic of wifebeaters and jeans weren’t very studentlike attire. Steve gave him a sympathetic look but resumed his quest for food.

It really wasn’t just the suit, or the shave, though they counted for a lot. Without product in it, Tony’s hair looked just normal-guy tousled instead of billionaire-playboy (or genius engineer) styled, and Bruce felt vaguely ashamed that he hadn’t noticed the purely visual part of Tony’s armor.

“Called in sick, no work this week.” Tony replied, falsely flippant. Bruce was just now noticing the darker than usual circles under his eyes and the rasp in his voice. He also sounded a little congested. “The hoodie’s comfortable.”

Tony had seemed a bit under the weather when Bruce had left over a week ago... He sighed a bit wryly and moved to sit down next to the other scientist. “That’s surprisingly sensible of you,” he murmured. Knowing Tony and his pride/ego/insecurities about his position on the team, Bruce half expected Tony to succumb to bronchitis long before admitting to illness.

Tony made a face - Bruce shouldn’t be surprised but it was just unbelievable how he looked so young and the expression was exceptionally bratty. “Pepper made me.” he confessed petulantly. “I told her I was fine!”

“I’m sure you were,” Bruce replied, giving Tony a long, searching look. Besides the dark circles and the lack of facial hair, there might have been a small flush, possibly from fever. Just to be sure, Bruce pressed his palm to Tony’s forehead, moving slowly and deliberately so that the other man can protest or stop him if needed.

Tony rolled his eyes in a long-suffering way that was nearly identical to the expression that Pepper had leveled at him more than once, but didn’t move away. “You know, JARVIS monitors my vitals, you can just ask him for my temperature.”

Steve came back with a plate stacked high with sandwich triangles to watch the proceedings, still smiling a little. “I started the coffee maker,” he said, apropos of nothing, except it made Tony light up and make happy ‘Coffee!’ noises. “And Bruce, we did that already.”

“ _All_ of them,” Tony complained. Bruce pulled his hand back, satisfied that there was no fever, and the other man hopped to his feet. “Please excuse me, because _coffee calls_!” They watched as he stumbled around the coffee table and hurried to the kitchen for the caffeinated drink.

“There’s hot water too, if you wanted to make some tea.” Steve offered, sitting down in the spot Tony vacated. Bruce shook his head, turning his eyes away from where Tony had disappeared.

“Sorry, it’s a shock,” Bruce finally said.

“It was pretty funny, especially when Clint almost fell out of the vents that first day,” the captain said fondly. Bruce was a little ashamed to admit he tried to find any hint of censure in the other man’s tone, because he should know better. These people knew why he had to go. “I...no, _we_ had no idea. Even Natasha didn’t know...Did you know he’s only a few years older than me?”

Bruce knew Steve didn’t mean his actual age, and tried to remember if he actually ever really looked at any files with Tony’s age in it and came up blank. Tony had always been a genius, whether at age 4 or 14, and the media tended to focus more on the billionaire playboy part of his public face, on the scandals he was inevitably mired in. He managed to extrude so much sheer personality that it was hard to see anything beyond it, and for all that he acted like an immature brat most of the time, he was also indisputably brilliant and the heir to the Stark name, and that carried with it a certain sense of expectation.

And Bruce was starting to realize that Tony probably built his armor years before he built Iron Man, the armor of flash and glamor and sheer rich-entitled-asshole just to cover up the fact those expectations - too much for even a grown man - would’ve crushed him otherwise.

“...No.” Bruce admitted. “I always thought that CEOs of billion dollar companies had to be at least in their forties. It’s hard to imagine someone getting that far before they even hit thirty.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah, I thought Tony was right at first, that my eyes were going from old age. But, no. Howard and Maria had Tony late, apparently, and he graduated college around the time most kids finish high school.”

“I,” Tony announced, coming back into the living room with a large mug of steaming, black-as-sin coffee, “earned my first Masters’ around the time most kids finish high school.” He gestured with the cup, “Don’t go short-changing my genius, Capsicle.”

Instead of getting irritated, which would’ve been perfectly reasonable and had actually happened before, Steve merely looked amused as he scooted over to make room. “Sit. Eat your sandwich.”

“Maybe I should call you ‘mom’ instead,” Tony retorted, but only ducked his head with a mock-scowl when Steve reached over and ruffled his hair. It was rather glaringly obvious to Bruce that he didn’t even make the pretense of trying to move away, might’ve even pushed into the contact just a little.

Steve’s bottomless stomach was nothing new, but it was somewhat novel to see Tony demolishing sandwiches alongside him. Tony made a face when he caught Bruce looking, but finished chewing and swallowed before talking - doubtlessly a lingering remnant of good manners hammered into him since childhood, “Was sick, think the latter half of it was the stomach flu.” He took a sip of the coffee and saved the last sandwich, holding it out to Bruce as an offer. “Pretty much spent three days puking my guts out, I haven’t had real food in _days_.”

Bruce grimaced, feeling whatever appetite he had leaving him in a flash, and waved the sandwich back, “You just had to tell me all about the hurling before giving me food, huh?”

The elevator door opened to Jarvis announcing, “Welcome back, Agent Romanov, Agent Barton,” and Clint cackling.

The marksman copied Steve’s hair-ruffle on his way past the sofa - it made Tony’s hair stand almost on end, as if he had been shocked. “Yo, Bruce. You should’ve seen it, the projectile vomiting was _epic_ ,” he laughed and swiped the sandwich .

“Your _face_ is epic.” Tony batted ineffectively at Clint, only to fumble as Natasha snatched the sandwich back and shoved it at him.

“Eat.” Natasha ordered, then nodded at Bruce in greeting. “Hello, Dr. Banner.”

“Hello, Natasha. Tony, are you sure you should be eating this soon after...uh, your stomach problems?”

Tony had his cheeks stuffed like a squirrel, which made Clint crack up again. “Oh, shut up.” Tony managed after he swallowed. “I should’ve hurled on _you_.”

“You’d better not, or I won’t be there to hold your hair away from your face again, princess,” Clint snorted, sounding both snarky and potentially serious. He wisely did not make a swipe for the coffee, even though he looked tempted. Bruce sighed at them and the archer grudgingly held his hands up in a ‘nothin’ doin’’ gesture.

Natasha disappeared briefly, only to return with two cups of tea. She sat down in the armchair and Steve made room for Clint to squeeze in between him and Tony, because Clint was apparently planning to join them on the couch, ostensibly to leave the loveseat for Thor when he showed up. Except Bruce happened to know that Thor visited Jane on Tuesdays and Wednesdays...so this attempt just made for a very crowded sofa. But Bruce didn’t miss the fact that they let him have the end, like they always did, because he didn’t like being boxed in.

“When’d you get back, Bruce?”

“Just now, actually.”

“Everything okay?” And there was that casual tone with the serious undercurrent again, like Clint really wanted to know and if everything was not okay, he and the rest of the team was ready to _make_ it okay.

It warmed a part of Bruce’s heart that he thought had withered away, and also induced a contented rumble from the Hulk in the back of his mind. “Everything’s fine,” he replied with a smile. “How’ve things been here?”

Tony and Clint both started talking at once, each getting louder to try and drown out the other - Clint was trying to recount Tony’s sickness in the grossest terms possible and Tony was trying to outshout him about a new breakthrough in stretchy pants for the Hulk. Steve was trying not to laugh and rescued Tony’s coffee cup from an ignoble end. He eventually waded into the discussion in a misguided attempt to stop the barrage of creative insults between the quippy billionaire and the smartass archer. It bore a disturbing similarity to an older brother trying to break up an argument between two younger siblings.

Natasha sat back and traded a tiny smile with him, the barest hint of curl to her lip as she watched the boys bicker. “Welcome back, Bruce,” she said, pushing one of the steaming cups of tea toward him.

He accepted it graciously, both the drink and the words, because some part of him could accept the truth of it now. He took a deep breath, letting the heat of the cup warm his hands and the friendly voices warm the rest of him.

“I’m back.”

**End

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Bruce's experience with his undergrad professor is actually my experience, except my prof was for linear algebra.
> 
> 2\. I'm doing cleanup, so apologies for posting older stuff.


End file.
